All the men I have loved

All the men I have loved 

have always told me not to be so angry

That I should laugh more often

And because I loved them and wanted to please them

I pretended to, but the rage never went away

Today I tell them I don’t want to calm down,

I don’t want to smile

This is a legitimate rage

And I rage for all the years we had to hide

We still do

All the years we had no claim over our own bodies

We still don’t

All the years we remained someone’s mother, 

or sister or wife or daughter

Never our own person

And all the history you took away from us

Confining our names to sidenotes, afterthoughts,

Villianising us, romanticizing us

But robbing us of our agency,

Our right to be angry

Our right to rage against everything that we have suffered

And still suffer

Today I don't want to be your darling daughter

I have no use for your love

If it doesn't let me decide

 The terms of my life

Today I don't want to be the love of your life

If you only loved me for my smile.

If this would ever end, then when

You are beginning to come to terms
With your tight fist of a heart
And that you will always be a little angry
at your own helplessness, at all the sand that
slips through your hands
At your ancestors for having been so foolish
To have got you into this mess,
There is no walking away without
blood in your hands
Something wasn't right from the start,
and you knew it
But when you screamed nobody listened
Because who listens to a woman
in this land unless you are old with a husband in tow
Nobody remembers the past,
except for distortions,
It is now Us and Them
Sometimes hate finds your way into your heart
And then the self-loathing afterwards
Sometimes you watch from your window
for the familiar sight of burning tyres
Boys in their teens running in glee
And the chemically induced tears afterwards
Last night in your dream
you were wandering in a mist
Wondering if this would ever end, then when?